The G20 that could have been

By John Birmingham

It could have been so different. Angela Merkel showed us how different when she lit out of her VIP Prison Camp on Friday for Caxton Street to knock the top off a couple of cold ones and photobomb an unknowable number of selfies. She didn't roll on the pub and club strip in a Tiger tank. She wasn't cordoned off from the punters. The German Chancellor was probably the only leader who'll leave the city with even the slightest sense that Brisbane is any different from any other collection of hotel rooms and underground car parks anywhere in the developed world.

How many of her fellow leaders could have joined her on the turps. To be sure, Obama couldn't. That's just not how the Americans work. It's the price of a gun culture. And given that Putin was just a little bit responsible for the death of dozens of locals and hundreds of other innocents a few months ago, he was probably better off staying in his hotel room channel surfing the cable porn.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Photo: supplied

But the Saudis? They love a drink. The French could have had a grand time being all snooty and superior until the seventh jug of Bundy and Coke hooked the legs out from under them. I'm sure the Mexicans and Italians and especially the Poms would have loved to rip it up on a pub crawl.

Was there seriously a reason the entire goddamned city had to be put into a sleeper hold? It's over now, and hopefully all the businesses that lost so much money can start repairing the damage before their bills catch up with them. But maybe next time we can think about doing things differently.

A decent host would be a start. Without that, there won't be a next time. Abbott proved himself to be a second-rater and an embarrassment, and that's not a partisan reflection. There were any number of people in his own party who could have pulled off the gig with more class. Hell, even George Brandis, wearing a beer carton or a knotted hanky on his shiny red dome, instead of suffering through that lethal-looking sunburn. Julie Bishop would have been charming, except to Putin, whom she'd have cut with an icy death stare. And of course Turnbull would have been more than comfortable in the company of a room full of people he considered just slightly beneath him, but worth schmoozing up to for a deal anyway.

Advertisement

Abbott, though. Oh sweet baby cheeses, we're gonna be having flashback cringes for years. All that was needed to perfect his small-minded, parochial git act was some high-vis, a hard hat and bumper stickers on all the official G20 limos: We Love Coal.

Lord Quirky bumbled through at City Hall. I'm not sure what he contributed, besides handing out bags of merch at the airport, but bless him for doing his bit. Even Campbell Newman was gracious enough to give some of the credit for a quiet weekend to the protesters who turned up, did their thing and pissed off quietly afterwards.

They were probably the only local people the delegates saw.

Everybody else buggered off to the beach and that's partly why there will be no pay-off for the city out of the half-billion-dollar investment. Brisbane ended up looking like a Chinese ghost town and, as President Xi Jinping will tell you, he's got plenty of those to spare already. Why bother coming back here.

Only Angela Merkel could tell him the truth about what he missed out on.